CHESHIRE is only ranked 28th in a survey of county’s with the best quality of life.

The Country Life magazine survey assessed each county on the quality of its health services, green policy, schools, social fabric, heritage, landscape and wildlife, plus pubs, restaurants, local food and number of sunshine hours. It also looked at quintessentially English assets such as the number of village greens, the quality of light and tranquillity, plus the number of residents who appeared in the Who’s Who.

Cheshire has dropped five places since the survey was taken in 2003, when it was 21st. Although the county scores highly in areas such as flood risk and food it failed to impress in categories such as tranquility and light and the number of village greens.

The county’s tourism board Visit Chester and Cheshire responded with surprise at its low ranking and questioned how the survey was put together.

Chris Brown, Visit Chester and Cheshire’s Chief Executive said: “When looking at this survey it is clear to see that the top 11 in this a survey are from the south of England. Now we regard this as very odd and I am sure our other Northern colleagues would too. We would question how this survey has been undertaken and what criteria has been used to judge the quality of life.

“We know we have some great assets in Cheshire and we know it is a great place to live. We value our quality of life in this county and we won’t be told by a survey what it is.

“We will be contacting Country Life to find out what criteria they used for this survey and to try and understand why we were not at the top of the list.”